When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.NASA is testing the limits of future Mars aircraft as it works to develop a next-generation fleet of helicopters that will fly through the thin atmosphere of the Red Planet.In March, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California completed tests on rotor designs that could be used to fly those drones, spinning the experimental helicopter blades fast enough for their tips to exceed Mach 1 (the speed of sound).AdvertisementAdvertisementA total of 137 tests were performed inside a state-of-the-art chamber that can simulate Engineers also tested a longer, two-bladed rotor for SkyFall, a mission concept designed to send three next-generation Mars helicopters to the Red Planet in December 2028. The increased length of the two-bladed version allowed the rotor to reach the same near-supersonic speeds with fewer rotations per minute. Those tests collected data that are being integrated into the SkyFall mission team’s design specifications, according to the same statement.”The successful testing of these rotors was a major step toward proving the feasibility of flight in more demanding environments, which is key for next-gen vehicles,” Shannah Withrow-Maser, an aerodynamicist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, said in the statement.The successful tests point toward a new class of Mars exploration vehicle, capable of carrying instruments over terrain that rovers may struggle to reach and that orbiters may be too far away to study. …
